The Shakes
by RenaRoo
Summary: In a simpler time, they are still together and when Arizona can hardly stop herself from shaking. At least, she can't until Callie is there to help her. ArizonaxCallie. Sapphic September: Hands.


Writing for the original GA OTP makes me incredibly sad all over again but I am happy to do it for Sapphic September. No matter how much I don't like how Arizona and Callie ended, their relationship was so formative for a young me, so I just wanted to put together a short little blurb from this day's prompt for them.

Grey's Anatomy and related characters © ABC  
story © RenaRoo

 **The Shakes**

A surgeon's most important tool is her hands.

It's no secret, the common philosophy is that a surgeon will ensure their hands more than their own lives. It's an ancient adage by now.

Arizona Robbins is not a stranger to the inclination that a steady hand is among the most important things to her livelihood. Even when she's quietly on her own — something she ardently tries to avoid in the pediatric wing — the grace and movement of her hands is something she's cautious of, something she's consistently checking. The strength of her fingers' grips, the steadiness of her palms, the speed of each tap.

Hands are important. Mastery of them is the _most_ important.

She's talking to Karev, nothing special. Her protege has long since surpassed the need of her direct oversight. in fact she's considering letting her next rotation shadow under him on her day off with Sofia when she feels the pen that she's clicking slip.

It _slips._

Through fumbling fingers and unprepared palms — not the trained and steadfast tools of a surgeon capable of making the most secure and patient of reverse mattress suture with eyes closed and mind a million miles away listening to the music of the surgery room.

The pen _slips_ and she doesn't catch it. She can't

Her hands tremble, fingers unorthodox in their feeble attempts to obey her commands. Her palms are sweaty and she remembers how _tightly_ they gripped, clung to, dug through her own flesh, as the plane—

It went down and it took her with it, it buried her, her leg, killed the father of her daughter, tore through family and friends and the hiss of pain from her own leg. It hits her, it hits her all over again and the trembling should be in her toes but the toes, she knows, are not there. Not on her left foot. There _is_ no left foot.

Her hands squeeze and she can't stop shaking. Even when Karev jokes as he picks up her pen and tries to hand it to her.

For some reason he can't see her screaming inside, can't see how her body is recoiling and out of control and her hands — by god, she doesn't have _control of her hands_. And she exhales, realizing moments too late that Karev is waiting for an answer.

She tells him to keep the pen and turns to leave his perplexed face.

When she walks away she grips her hands into fists at her side, then releases, counts the seconds it takes for them to respond. Repeats as she walks faster, escaping to the resident's break room, heart racing nearly as fast as her hands are trembling.

There's no one in the break room and she paces, paces on one leg and one prosthetic, hearing engines failing and loved ones screaming.

With hands shaking, she doesn't even feel human anymore. She doesn't feel real, like the same person she once was. She feels that the Arizona she knows, the Arizona who is a surgeon and good and saves tiny humans daily, is not the shaking, out of control mess who is pacing in the resident's break room like a madwoman.

Her hands are out of control and so is her life and so is _everything._

At least, until Callie is there.

Her beautiful, amazing wife comes, as if a sixth sense has drawn her to Arizona in this moment of crumbling disappointment.

Then Callie is _there_ and her hands are holding Arizona's hands, her forehead's against Arizona's forehead, her words soothing Arizona's ears.

They rock together in the moment and Arizona closes her eyes, allows the sway, and no longer imagines planes and crashes and pain but smiles and morning showers and a house they buy together.

She's not in control but she's _controlling_ what she can in the moment, can hold Callie's hands back, can press her own forehead forward, can thank Callie reverently beneath shuddering breaths.

"I love you," is the only words of substance in the moment. But they're enough to take away the shakes, to remember that a lack of control isn't a loss of all that she is and all that she's fought for.

Moments without control are moments she holds Callie's hands to ride through the storms.

And even if it's something that will not be there forever, and even if it's something that is as fleeting as the tremble of a finger, Arizona knows that because of Callie, she's learned she's strong enough to live through it all.

Hands are not the most important, nor their mastery. The most important is Arizona knowing that when her hands fail, she has someone else's to pick them back up.


End file.
